Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet said on Tuesday that the government had released 1.2 billion U.S. dollars to assist the poor and vulnerable people in the country since 2019.
The Southeast Asian nation has provided cash handouts to pregnant women and children under the age of two since 2019, to COVID-19-affected poor and vulnerable people since 2020, and to inflationary pressures-hit households since 2022.
“The government has so far provided a total of 1.2 billion dollars in cash assistance to about 4.8 million people, and these programs will still continue,” Hun Manet said in a speech during a get-together with thousands of garment factory workers in Phnom Penh.
According to the prime minister, from January to September this year, the government had spent nearly 400 million dollars to support them.”This clearly demonstrates our high attention paid to those poor and vulnerable people,” he said, adding that these programs have importantly contributed to poverty reduction in the kingdom.
The United Nations Development Program in Cambodia released a report in July, saying that the programs had significantly benefited the poor and vulnerable households.
The UN agency said the poverty rate in Cambodia had declined to 16.6 percent in 2022 from 36.7 percent in 2014, and that the number of poor people was halved from 5.6 million to 2.8 million. Source: Xinhua
